The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
- Thread starter Ghost
- Start date
They must, I have no idea how else they would like to manage with the story, but I don't think Smaug will actually talk in the movie, I was thinking more that Bilbo will hear his voice in his head... I might be wrong of course.
Edit: just looked it up - Benedict Cumberbatch is listed as Smaug on IMDb... :romance-cloud9:
Edit: just looked it up - Benedict Cumberbatch is listed as Smaug on IMDb... :romance-cloud9:
Yep - Benedict's voicing Smaug and also the Necromancer so two roles for him in there. I'm not sure, but I think Bilbo never actually sees Smaug's lips move as such, so it could be a kind of 'magic voice' deal as Tolkien's dragons could ensorcel people since they have the spirits of demons allied to Sauron and his boss Morgoth... :angelic-red:
Good choice for Smaug's voice.
Reading the book I was never under the impression Smaug was using telepathy, I just always assumed he was talking to Bilbo through voice, the main reason being Bilbo has the ring on when he enters the lair & Smaug smells him not senses that he's there. Regarding the Weta Workshop, I can't quite believe that a talking dragon would be too hard for them to create.
Also, the glimpse of Smaug at the end of the 1st movie, it doesn't look like he has the red eyes. One of my everlasting impressions of Smaug is his red eyes being quite menacing & unsettling.
But, you know, I don't like to be picky about these things. I'll it watch & enjoy all the same.
Reading the book I was never under the impression Smaug was using telepathy, I just always assumed he was talking to Bilbo through voice, the main reason being Bilbo has the ring on when he enters the lair & Smaug smells him not senses that he's there. Regarding the Weta Workshop, I can't quite believe that a talking dragon would be too hard for them to create.
Also, the glimpse of Smaug at the end of the 1st movie, it doesn't look like he has the red eyes. One of my everlasting impressions of Smaug is his red eyes being quite menacing & unsettling.
But, you know, I don't like to be picky about these things. I'll it watch & enjoy all the same.
Tonyblack said:
Yeah, but it's not like he invented dragons. 
Tolkien's dragons are all sourced from Norse myth and they don't all breathe fire or fly necessarily. The one that did most magic (in the Silmarrillion) was Glaurung, a wingless, fire breather who specialised in wiping memories and started a tragic incestuous Arthurian storyline for one of the great heroes Turin Turambar (Mordred's supposed to be Arthur's son by half-sister Morgana in one legend). Tolkien 'borrowed' all over the shop for Middle Earth, with Atlantean myth featuring as well with his devastating tsunami running from a recurring dream he used to have and used twice in the Sil to destroy part of Middle Earth and the island kingdom of Westernesse (Lyonnesse anyone?
) that Aragorn's ancestors came from.
Yeah - Tolkien also loved the Welsh language. He heavily based one of his Elvish languages, Sindarin, the clan Thranduil and Legolas were leaders of, on the Brythonic branch Nothing's new, but to be fair Tolkien deliberately set out to make Middle Earth a wholly British manufactured mythology, and so it was only logical to use mainly pre-Roman cultural sources (so the Celts) and some post-occupation incoming elements like the Saxons and Viking, particularly for deities like Wodens and Odin, as there's also strong parallels there with Odin's ordeal on Yggdrasil (shades of Gandalf's 'remaking' after the fight with the Balrog) and the Saxon and Gothic languages in which Tolkien was a world authority as a Professor of Philology. He based the language of Rohan and Mordor respectively on those two 'dead' languages
Actually that methodology isn't a million miles away from how Terry does some of his 'god construction', though of course Tolkien being a committed Catholic had to be a bit more Holy Joe with the good/evil dichotomies :twisted:
